Quote of the Day

"It's not just a bad deal, this is really an insulting deal... Robert E. Lee was offered easier terms at Appomattox and he lost the Civil War. The Democrats won by 3% of the vote and they did not hold the House. Republicans won the House. So this is not exactly unconditional surrender, but that's what the administration is asking of Republicans."

Charles Krauthammer, on the Obama administration's first offer to the Republicans during the fiscal cliff talks.

You can agree or disagree with the merits of President Obama's offer to Republicans. What Krauthammer shouldn't do is compare the fiscal cliff negotiations to the bloodiest war on American soil. Krauthammer is a hack of epic magnitude.

Is Charles Krauthammer Ever Honest?

Charles Krauthammer's view on calling presidential debates is about as trustworthy as Dick Morris. Krauthammer declares Mitt Romney the winner. Krauthammer says that all Romney had to do is show up.

”I think it’s unequivocal — Romney won, and he didn’t just win tactically, but strategically. Strategically, all he needed to do was basically a draw, he needed to continue the momentum he’s had since the first debate, and this will continue it. Tactically, he simply had to get up there and show that he’s a competent man, and somebody you can trust as commander-in-chief.”

Krauthammer is a man who helped further the Bush administration's bogus case of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Former Office of Special Plans staffer Karen Kwiatkowski wrote that Krauthammer was using talking points fed from Pentagon neoconservatives.

I suspected, from reading Charles Krauthammer, a neoconservative columnist for the Washington Post, and the Weekly Standard, and hearing a Cheney speech or two, that these talking points left the building on occasion.

The height of Krauthammer's chutzpah is when in 2004 he declared in 2004 that President George W. Bush won the war in Afghanistan.

President Bush put in place a military campaign that did in two months what everyone had said was impossible: defeat an entrenched, fanatical, ruthless regime in a territory that had forced the great British and Soviet empires into ignominious retreat. Bush followed that by creating in less than three years a fledgling pro-American democracy in a land that had no history of democratic culture and was just emerging from 25 years of civil war.

Krauthammer wrote in 2009 that President Barack Obama was committed to losing the war in Afghanistan. Krauthammer penned this masterpiece after Obama's West Point speech.

I would therefore defer to their judgment and support their recommended policy. But the fate of this war depends not just on them. It depends also on the president. We cannot prevail without a commander in chief committed to success.

And this commander in chief defended his exit date (vs. the straw man alternative of "open-ended" nation-building) thusly: "because the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own."

Remarkable. Go and fight, he tells his cadets -- some of whom may not return alive -- but I may have to cut your mission short because my real priorities are domestic.

Has there ever been a call to arms more dispiriting, a trumpet more uncertain?

I would love someone to ask Krauthammer how could Obama lose a war Bush won. The Charles Krauthammer archives is the gift that keeps on giving.

Krauthammer can't even tell on the history of a war still going on? There is no reason to trust his opinion on the outcome of a presidential debate.

Joel Award: Charles Krauthammer

It is time to give out the Joel Award. The award goes any celebrity, pundit, blogger or politician that purposely contradicts himself or herself.

This 2004 comedy gem by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer is worth revisiting. Krauthammer's neoconservative declares President Bush's Afghanistan invasion a resounding success.

President Bush put in place a military campaign that did in two months what everyone had said was impossible: defeat an entrenched, fanatical, ruthless regime in a territory that had forced the great British and Soviet empires into ignominious retreat. Bush followed that by creating in less than three years a fledgling pro-American democracy in a land that had no history of democratic culture and was just emerging from 25 years of civil war.

In 2009, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai rigged the election to favor himself. Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali, is one of the most powerful heroin traffickers in the world. The Taliban presence is at it's strongest since the invasion. A 2007 International Council on Security and Development report found the Taliban controlled 54 percent of Afghanistan. Apparently, the Taliban didn't realize Krauthammer declared Bush the victor.

Krauthammer on President Barack Obama's West Point speech.

No one expected Obama to do a Henry V or a Churchill. But Obama could not even manage a George W. Bush, who, at an infinitely lower ebb in power and popularity, opposed by the political and foreign policy establishments and dealing with a war effort in far more dire straits, announced his surge -- Iraq 2007 -- with outright rejection of withdrawal or retreat. His implacability was widely decried at home as stubbornness, but heard loudly in Iraq by those fighting for and against us as unflinching -- and salutary -- determination.

What about Bush's handling of Afghanistan in 2007. Krauthammer is suffering from selective memory loss. He declared mission accomplished in Afghanistan. For Afghanistan's sake Obama should avoid doing a Bush.

Krauthammer should be ignored on foreign policy matters. He argued for the Iraq invasion on the basis of weapons of mass destruction. His neocon heart supports torture. Do neocons, such as Krauthammer get to decide who is a terrorist? The neocons' track record wasn't so great on WMDs. How many innocent people will have to be tortured to satisfy Krauthammer's thirst for blood? If there are innocent people tortured don't expect, people like Krauthammer, to turn themselves in to the authorities. They might be tortured by the oppressive justice system they wished to create.

Quote of the Day

"They were ostensibly about taxes. Obama hasn't raised taxes as of now by a penny. So what was all that about? It was a natural pushback by people who have sense of the government expanding rapidly in its size and control. It was simply an inchoate reaction, the sort of thing that happens very early on in a very important and consequential presidency."

Charles Krauthammer, on how the confused state of the Republican Party.

Quote of the Day

"Six years later and with time running out on this administration, the Bush legacy is clear: one for three. Contrary to current public opinion, Bush will have succeeded on Iraq, failed on Iran and fought North Korea to a draw."

Charles Krauthammer

Perhaps this is the fine kind of punditry that made Time decide not to renew Krauthammer's contract.

Conservative Reaction To Gore's Win

The conservative talking points against Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize win. New York Sun columnist Seth Gitell states that General David Petraeus should have won the Nobel Peace Prize. He is parroting the line started by Rush Limbaugh.

Charles Krauthammer compares Gore's win to Yasir Arafat's.

"Let's remember what the prize is about. Al Gore now joins Yasir Afafat. The father of modern terrorism.

We won't even get into Krauthammer winning a Pultizer Prize. He does a good enough job destroying his own credibility.

Iraqis were given their freedom, and yet many have chosen civil war. Among all these religious prejudices, ancient wounds, social resentments and tribal antagonisms, who gets the blame for the rivers of blood? You can always count on some to find the blame in America. "We did not give them a republic," insists Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. "We gave them a civil war."

Krauthammer has an interesting concept of freedom. The Iraqi government doesn't even have the power to remove Blackwater.